'Seamless' Partnership: 2 Couples, 1 Vacation Home

The living room of the Lasher and Koppel apartment in Jerusalem.Credit
Rebecca Kowalsky

JERUSALEM — Both of the times that Robert Koppel has thought about buying an apartment in Israel, the first person he talked with was Lee Lasher, his business partner.

Of course Mr. Koppel’s wife, Laurie, and Mr. Lasher’s wife, Cheryl, joined the discussions. But after 28 years in an environmental management and commodities trading business in New York, the two men say they have similar thoughts about nearly everything, even sharing a vacation home. “We have a seamless relationship,” Mr. Koppel said. “We complement each other well.”

Laurie Koppel nodded and said, “They’re perfect for each other.”

And, when Mr. Lasher was asked about the partnership, he added: “People think it’s crazy. What’s great about us is how complementary we are; it’s almost like a marriage.”

As often happens, the partners had to be interviewed at different times. The Koppels and their extended family visited Israel in early autumn, while Mr. Lasher came with one of his children a few weeks later.

“People ask how can I buy a house with my business partner,” Mr. Lasher said. “And I think it’s just the opposite. I know when he’s traveling, he knows when I’m traveling, and we know how to work together.”

As observant Jews, the Koppels and Lashers, from Long Island and New Jersey, respectively, have visited Israel often over the years. But in 2007 the two men realized they both had been coming to the country several times a year, for quick weekends to celebrate occasions with family and close friends or to attend an event of the social causes they both support. Mr. Lasher had tired of staying in hotels, and wanted his own place. Not surprisingly, it turned out Mr. Koppel felt the same way.

“We both wanted to invest in something, to support Israel,” Mr. Koppel said.

They began looking at apartments and decided they would buy a place together.

“We have a similar philosophy about Israel,” Mr. Lasher said. “We both give a lot of charity to Israeli organizations, both personally and from the business. Between Bob and myself, we probably each spend 70 to 80 days a year in Israel.”

It wasn’t hard to find a suitable place. Mr. Lasher consulted three brokers and visited a series of neighborhoods, finally focusing on a three-bedroom, two-bath apartment. It had 80 square meters, or 861 square feet, of living space and was in Jerusalem’s Katamon neighborhood.

The two families orchestrated their visits, with the Koppels taking Sukkot, the fall holiday that follows the Jewish New Year, and the Lashers opting for Passover, when Ms. Lasher’s parents would join them.

“We were crammed in together,” Mr. Lasher recalled. “We would have to move the couch when more than six people came for dinner, and sit twisted around to watch TV.”

Within five years, both families felt they had outgrown the place and were ready to find something larger.

“We looked at a lot of apartments, but so many of them were gut jobs or too big, or too expensive, with views into someone else’s drainage pipes,” said Mr. Lasher.

It took two years for them to find their new place: a 280-square-meter, two-story unit with five bedrooms. The new, unfinished apartment was built on top of a 90-year-old house, which lent an air of history, but included amenities such as an elevator.

The apartment was in the German Colony neighborhood, one of the most popular areas of Jerusalem, known for its tree-lined streets, flower-filled window boxes and gardens that blend into the street scene. It is considered a highly desirable neighborhood by both locals and foreigners, with easy access to Emek Refaim, the district’s main street, which boasts good restaurants, cafes and shops. And many of the area’s homes feature typical Jerusalem architecture, with high ceilings, arched windows and tiled floors painted to resemble Persian rugs.

But the neighborhood has become expensive for locals, with prices ranging at around $10,000 per square meter, according to Alyssa Friedland, a local real estate agent. Even the Koppels and the Lashers said the asking price, which they do not want to disclose, was a stretch.

Still, the unit had been empty for a long time, and the partners thought they had a good chance of snagging it.

“We called the broker on the way to the airport,” Mr. Lasher said. “I said, ‘This isn’t a ploy or a negotiation, but this is the price we’re offering, and that’s the offer.’ We got a call back while we were still in the taxi.”

The next step was the renovation, a far larger project than their previous apartment, given that the new place needed a working kitchen, five bathrooms en suite and finishing touches like built-in closets and headboards. That’s when Ms. Koppel suggested working with Jeffrey Mark, an interior designer based in her Long Island neighborhood who commutes weekly to Israel for personal reasons.

For 14 months, the two couples exchanged email messages with Mr. Mark and his assistant in Israel, sending back and forth descriptions and photos of fabric swatches, lighting fixtures, granite, tiles and cabinetry.

“We would select something and tell them about it in these great, exciting emails, like, ‘we’ve been out all day in Tel Aviv, and we found this incredible lamp or piece of stone for the backsplash and here are four choices,”’ Mr. Mark said, adding that he also brought back to New York samples of every piece of granite, tile or fabric that he purchased. “And we would get four different emails in response, with one of them inevitably saying, ‘I don’t like any of them.’ A lot of the time it was just majority rules and the fourth would just join in.”

Some of the choices, however, required little compromise, like using a massive slab of petrified wood for the dining room table top or installing a cascading light fixture in the two-level space above the table. They also all agreed on more local touches, like the inlaid pearl chess table that Mr. Mark found in the city’s Arab market or the contemporary Israeli art that both couples have been collecting.

Mr. Lasher wanted “something red,” which finally became the color of the front door, and there was the issue of equally sized built-in closets in both master bedrooms — but that was something “that was important to all of us,” Mr. Koppel said.

The project was completed in November, but it took far longer than anyone expected and Mr. Lasher said he was still quibbling with the contractor over certain details.

“I’m very particular,” Mr. Lasher said. “I see a scratch, and I say, ‘I didn’t pay for that scratch.’ That’s the difference between me and Bob. He came to stay in the house before it was done, and slept there. I came a few weeks later, and it was literally a construction zone.”

Now that it is complete, the finished home has “a great feeling,” Mr. Koppel said. “It’s definitely nicer than our house back in New York.”

Mr. Lasher agreed. “My kids saw it on Passover and they said, ‘Why is our house in Israel nicer than our house in New Jersey?’ For me, that was them really getting it. This is really our home.”

Correction: December 27, 2013

An earlier version of this article misspelled the name of the interior designer. He is Jeffrey Mark, not Marks.